MEME MEME MEME

Who doesn’t love a good meme? Scoping out the internet, coming across a little picture with some words spread across it, and having a good laugh? Memes are especially cool because they can be both created and remixed easily by anyone using sites like quickmeme. After browsing the Know Your Meme site, I posted a few of my favorites below.

So to start, I really like the first meme because it delivers a critique of the American political system and economic philosophy in a humorous way. Trickle-down economics, often attributed to the Republican Party, gives breaks to the people and businesses at the top with a mind that the money saved by not paying large taxes will trickle down to the rest of the population and actually improve the economy. Reagan and Bush Sr. both created and supported economic policies built around this idea. And most people know it’s bull shit, but that’s what makes this meme so funny: it’s like Reagan, Bush, and all these other old white political operatives are laughing because they were actually able to sell and legislate this bogus theory.

The next meme, ‘Merica, is another one of my favorites, just because it’s kind of poking fun at American stereotypes by featuring Americans who fit that stereotype. Stereotypes exist for a reason, right? Haha! I like this one because it has these kind of white-trashy men, women, and children all holding these shot guns and wearing cowboy hats. Cause that’s the American way!

The “Soon” meme is probably my favorite meme ever. I remember seeing this one on the internet last year and literally crying laughing. And they’re all that good. The ones with cats, the honey bear peaking out from the cupboard, they’re just genius.

Memes themselves relate to Ang’s paradigms of “media in everyday life” because we create and look at new memes daily, and they often relate to what’s going on in the world around us. Anyone remember after the seals killed Bin Laden, and the meme that followed it? So good! And memes can convey these heavy thoughts, or these big events, or just something silly, into something that we can easily share with our friends so that they can have a good laugh too.

As for incorporating memes into our final project, we’ll have to wait and see! We have a lot of really funny footage to work with, all of which pertains to nerd culture. I think we can totally make a meme with a GIF or just a still of our commercial’s lead character, Ned, to pique people’s interest in Geek Week.